Need to Know: April 19, 2013: Mississippi Savings

April 17, 2013

To mark financial literacy month, “Need to Know” correspondent Stacey Tisdale travels to Mississippi to examine a program designed to help low-income, mostly African-American children save for college – and teach them about banking and money along the way.

Also this week, anchor Ray Suarez interviews Richard Cordray, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

William Brangham reports on companies that are helping their workers make it through tough times with “income advance loans.” Once the loan is paid off, many workers keep the automatic deduction and start saving as a habit.

Save USA is a program created by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and funded by federal, state, and private dollars. It’s designed to get low-income New Yorkers to put their tax refunds in a savings account instead of spending them right away.

Stacey Tisdale travels to Memphis to examine if the city’s experimental “Family Rewards” program, which offers cash incentives to motivate high school students and their families, is helping to combat poverty.

Rick Karr recently visited Seattle to look at a program designed to give the unemployed the skills they need to find jobs in one of the country’s fastest-growing industries.

Comments

questionable1

There is a definite need for this however, I wonder where is the other parent. Shouldn’t the ‘parents’ be responsible for the training/raising of these children?

Big Wheels Turnin

I think this program is awesome because it begins to
break the cycle of a lack of financial knowledge which is prevalent in many of
the inner cities. This is why you have some many predatory lending institutions
like Pad Day Loans thriving in these communities. I grew up in one of these
economic depressed areas in Chicago and programs such as this is overdue.

http://www.facebook.com/ron.greenstein.7 Ron Greenstein

While I appreciate what Big Wheels Turnin says as it seems to make sense, I have a greater concern for the fact that this “financial knowledge” is a very limited and incomplete look at the whole picture of the socioeconomic paradigm of this country which is steeped in the competitive, every-man-for-himself struggle for necessities and the craving to “get ahead.” Besides who actually pays for their college education these days without being BURDENED by loans procured from the sharks and banksters. Oh, that would be the rich and powerful. This NTN program felt like an insidious indoctrination into what is sickest about of country’s values.

http://twitter.com/mastergil gil mendozza zuntzes

There is more than a single most over whelming challenge for the disadvantage in Mississippi. Perhas, but not difference then in the entire Country in our Corrupted Democracy. The education system is in a period of change at this time; the opporunity for significant education is not there and may never be present again in our lifetimes. WE DON’T HAVE EDUCATION SYSEM. . . but a “Pell Grant” multy billion dollars PONZI SCHEME BUSINESS SYSTEM and with a lot of problems and we call that “OUR AMERICAN EDUCATION SYSTEM” and these will never get nor be fixed. Young women and men are dropping out of High School and College by the millions; I will give you thousands of reasons why. . . administration. . . poverty. . . to much money allocated to schools. . . overpay/underpay teachers. . . no parents support. . . government does not VALUE EDUCATION. Our “President’s (negro Obama) response to the charge: “That the poor and the middle class are being made to carry the burden of this economy.”
ps negro Obama a big promoter of the ponzi scheme “Pell Grant”

http://twitter.com/mastergil gil mendozza zuntzes

I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE ADULTS FROM BANKS AND TEACHERS BRAINWASHING 3 YEAR OLD’S DEALING WITH MONEY, SHAMEFUL!

http://www.facebook.com/nancy.tinney.31 Nancy Tinney

what a lovely apologia for the banking industry. you should be ashamed. at least i learned something: don’t depend on mr. cordray to do what his title says he should be doing. so thanks for that, i guess.

jan

Saving for college…. Nice in theory but with a glaringly obvious limited or maybe even nonexistent acquaintanceship with the reality that most of us live in. It also doesn’t allow for further education in later years to update skills or meet the demands of a changing job market while coping with the added responsibilities and needs of a family.

Unsustainability

Interesting that so many wonder why schools are producing more and more essentially uneducated children, and not taking into account the impact illegal and legal immigration has on the ability to teach. One in four students in many urban areas are now children of immigrants, requiring expensive ever-more English as second language courses, while mainstreaming students and requiring teachers to teach to lowest common denominator of learning ability. This makes it obvious why scores are miserably lower than in countries like Finland. And the congress is now advancing a bill that considerably increases the numbers (31 million more in next 10 years) of those coming here.

Need to Know is a production of Creative News Group (CNG) in association with WNET. Marc Rosenwasser is Executive Producer. Need to Know is made possible by Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Mutual of America, Citi Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation, Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS.